Maybe briefly. Thanks for those comments, Mr. Lake.
Again, I won't repeat what I said before other than to reiterate that it was the practice of this committee in the last Parliament and that other committees have done it too. They've gone to that practice of equal witnesses.
There are always some slight deviations. For instance, there are certain committees, not very many, that are chaired by the opposition. Why is that? That's a deviation from the number of seats in the House of Commons. It's simply a reflection of the fact that sometimes [Technical difficulty—Editor] exception to the rules.
In my experience, one of the great advantages, and frankly pleasures, of sitting on the health committee is that when it's working at its best, it is a committee that is most unlike others in that there are usually not a lot of ideological issues. Everybody who's involved in health care is generally motivated by the same thing, which is they're in health care because they want to improve the health of people. Maybe COVID has upset that balance a little bit. There's been more partisan behaviour in the past two years than certainly I saw in the years prior to that. I think that's regrettable. I think we're at our best when we're operating in a non-partisan way.
The other thing I would point out is that every Parliament has a different dynamic. This is a minority Parliament. Let's face it. If we were in a majority Parliament, it would be a different dynamic. In this case here, it takes all of us working together and there are compromises in a minority Parliament that have to be made in order to get things done. I'm sure the Conservatives will be asking for the support of other parties, which they wouldn't have to do in a majority, but those are just the compromises that are made in a minority.
Overall though, and I really appreciate the remarks by Dr. Powlowski, it worked very well. There's a little bit of trust here in the sense that the witnesses that I put forward, and that I know my Bloc Québécois colleague put forward, often added perspectives that were extraordinarily helpful and were not ideological.
I think it's a good thing and we can see how it works. I think people will see that sometimes equality is a very good thing in the House of Commons.